The door swung open and Izya walked in, looking like a different person—all dried out, somehow, with a bony, tight-drawn face, sullen and bitter, as if it wasn’t he who had just been shrieking under the windows like a woman. He flung his half-empty rucksack into the corner, sat in an armchair facing Andrei, and said, “The bodies have been lying here for at least three days. What’s happening? Do you understand?”
Without saying anything, Andrei pushed the logbook across the table to him. Izya avidly grabbed it, devoured the entries in a single gulp, and looked up at Andrei with red eyes.
“The Experiment is the Experiment,” Andrei said with a crooked grin.
“Lousy, devious crap…” Izya said with hatred and disgust. He glanced through the log entries again and dropped the logbook on the table.
“I think they tampered with us at the square,” said Andrei. “Where the pediments are.”
Izya nodded, leaned back in the armchair, jerked up his beard, and closed his eyes. “Well, what are we going to do, Counselor?” he asked.
Andrei didn’t answer.
“Just don’t you even think of shooting yourself!” said Izya. “I know you… the Komsomol member… the young eagle…”
Andrei gave another crooked grin and tugged on his collar. “Listen,” he said, “let’s go somewhere else…”
Izya opened his eyes and stared at him.
“The stink from the window…” Andrei said with an effort. “I can’t…”
“Let’s go to my room,” said Izya.
In the corridor the Mute got up to greet them. Andrei took hold of his bare, muscular arm and drew him along. They all walked into Izya’s room together. The windows here looked out onto a different street. Beyond the low roofs behind the windows, the Yellow Wall soared upward. There was no stink at all here, and for some reason it was even cool. Only there was nowhere to sit—the floor was completely covered with heaps of paper and books.
“On the floor, sit on the floor,” Izya said, and collapsed onto the tangled, dirty sheets on his bed. “Let’s think,” he said. “I don’t intend to croak here. I’ve still got a whole heap of work to do.”
“What’s there to think about?” Andrei said morosely. “It all comes down to one thing… There’s no water, they took it. And all the food’s been burned. There’s no way back—we’d never make it across the desert… If we overtook those scumbags… But then, we can’t, it’s been days…” He paused for a moment. “If we could find water—is it far to that pumping station of yours?”
“About twenty kilometers,” said Izya. “Or thirty.”
“If we travel by night, in the cool…”
“We can’t travel by night,” said Izya. “It’s too dark. And the wolves…”
“There aren’t any wolves here,” Andrei objected.
“How do you know that?”
“Well, then let’s just shoot ourselves and to hell with it,” said Andrei. He already knew he wasn’t going to shoot himself. He wanted to live. He’d never realized before how much he could want to live.
“Ah, come on,” said Izya. “But seriously?”
“Seriously, I want to live. And I will survive. I don’t give a rotten damn for anything now. It’s just the two of us now, got it? The two of us have got to survive, and that’s all. And they can all damn well go to hell. We’ll just find water and live beside it.”
“That’s right,” said Izya. He sat up on the bed, pushed his hand under his shirt, and started scratching. “We’ll spend the day drinking water, and I’ll spend the night screwing you.”
Andrei looked at him, bewildered. “Have you got any other suggestions?” he asked.
“Not yet. That’s right—we have to find water. Without water we’re done for. Then we’ll see what comes after that. What I’m thinking right now is this: they obviously took off out of here in a big hurry, straight after the bloodbath. They were afraid. They climbed into the sled and stepped on the gas! We ought to ferret around in the house a bit—we’re bound to find water and food here…” He was about to say something else, but he stopped with his mouth hanging open and his eyes bulging. “Look, look!” he said in a frightened whisper.
Andrei rapidly swung around to face the window. He didn’t notice anything unusual at first; he only heard something—a kind of distant rumbling, like a landslide, as if rocks were showering down somewhere… Then his eyes spotted movement on the vertical yellow cliff face above the roofs.
From out of the bluish-whitish haze up high above, a strange triangular cloud was hurtling downward, with its pointed angle first. It was moving down from an unbelievable height, and was still a very long way from the foot of the Wall, but he could already make out a bulky form with painfully familiar outlines spinning furiously at the leading point, crashing into invisible projections and bouncing off them. At every blow, parts flew off the hulk and carried on falling beside it. Crushed rock hurtled down, fanning out as it fell, puffs of bright dust swirled up, and they drew together to form a cloud that widened out farther and farther, like the wake behind the stern of a speedboat, and the distant, rumbling roar grew louder, breaking up into separate blows, a drumroll of fragments crashing against the monolithic Cliff, the menacing rustling of a gigantic landslide…
“The tractor!” Izya exclaimed in a strangled voice.
Andrei only understood what Izya had said at the last moment, when the mangled and twisted vehicle smashed into the roofs, the floor under his feet shuddered from the appalling impact, a column of brick dust swirled upward, and fragments of stone and metal sheeting were sent flying through the air—an instant later all this was hidden under the tidal wave of the yellow avalanche.
For a long time they sat there without speaking, listening as the rumbling, crunching, and snapping tumbled on, and the floor under their feet kept shaking, and they couldn’t see anything over the roofs any longer through the motionless yellow cloud.
“Holy shit!” said Izya. “How the hell did they get up there?”
“Who?” Andrei asked obtusely.
“That’s our tractor, you blockhead!”
“What do you mean, our tractor? The one that took off?”
Izya massaged his nose as vigorously as he could with his dirty fingers before answering. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t understand a thing. . . Do you understand it?” he suddenly asked, turning to the Mute. “I don’t understand a thing.”
The Mute nodded indifferently. Izya slammed his fist down on his knees in annoyance, but just then the Mute made a strange gesture: he stretched his index finger out in front of him, rapidly lowered it to the floor, then lifted it up over his head, tracing out an elongated circle in the air.
“Well?” Izya asked avidly. “Well?”
The Mute shrugged and repeated the same gesture. Andrei suddenly remembered something, and when he remembered, he immediately understood everything.
“Falling Stars!” he exclaimed. “Well, would you believe it!” he laughed bitterly. “And I’ve only understood it now!”
“What have you understood?” Izya yelled. “What stars?”
Still laughing, Andrei just waved his hand. “Forget it,” he said. “Forget it, the whole damned thing! What does it matter to us now? No more blathering, Katzman! We have to survive, got that? Survive! In this abominable, impossible world! We need water, Katzman!”
“Hang on, hang on…” Izya muttered.
“There’s nothing else I want!” Andrei roared, shaking his clenched fists. “I don’t want to understand anything anymore! I don’t want to find out anything! Those are dead bodies lying out there, Katzman! Dead bodies! They wanted to live too, didn’t they, Katzman? And now they’re bloated and they’re rotting!”